Thrive by Arianna Huffington

Thrive by Arianna Huffington is a well-researched, intriguing work that thoroughly explores the unconventional notions of success and challenges its readers to re-evaluate their idea of “the good life.” The main points that you will gain from this work are:

The traditional perception of success as simply an accumulation of money and power is imbalanced, and like a two-legged stool, it is bound to topple

A successful life needs that third leg or “metric” to balance the stool out

The “third metric” consists of four pillars: well-being, wonder, wisdom and giving

The importance of nurturing our human capital and making our health a priority through sufficient sleep, practicing stress-reduction and disconnecting from technology

The role that wonder plays in a life lived to its fullest, and its presence in all remarkable individuals

The unsettling lack of wisdom in our modern world, and how to tap into your inner wisdom

How empathy and service powerfully increases our well-being and sense of purpose

Is This Book For You?

If you are interested in what makes up a life filled with joy, purpose, and contentment than this is a solid work to refer to. As it was pointed out in the main points, the normal idea of what a successful life entails is certainly worth reflecting upon.

If you are interested in the latest data, academic research and scientific findings about lowering your stress levels, increasing your happiness, accessing your inner wisdom, and maintaining a balanced life this book is chalk full of such evidence.

I believe that most individuals seeking self-improvement and who are genuinely curious about what it means to be happy would benefit from reading Thrive.

My Conclusion

I’m scoring this book a 9.5 out of 10. I agree with Arianna’s philosophy about “success” and the fact that there is more to it than just money and power, and the subjects that are discussed have long been overlooked and neglected.

In fact I would go as far as to say that power isn’t necessary to live a fulfilling life, and it seems wiser for power to arise indirectly, rather than sought after as an end goal. However, this is a topic for another post.

My only con about this work is that the style of writing didn’t have much flair, and at times I felt like was reading a newspaper. But perhaps this was intentional.

Despite this, Arianna did a phenomenal job of making the subject matter of this work quite captivating. She made use of startling scientific research, profound stories, and memorable quotes to reinforce her content.

Her use of all these techniques makes it extremely to absorb, and I was actually quite impressed with how fast I flew through this book because of how dynamically it is structured.

Reading Thrive not only informs you about the principles of well-being, wonder, wisdom and giving, it also gives you practical suggestions for incorporating them into your life.

At the end of each section Arianna provides a list of simple daily practices that one can experiment with so he or she can immediately apply what they have learned to their own lives.

There is also an Appendix at the end of the book that lists a wealth of resources from apps, to websites, to books to make it that much easier for us to set to work on cultivating our “third metric”.

This book was also quite personal, and many of the stories that were told were from Arianna’s own life. Although Arianna is obviously profiting off of this work, I felt that this book was written out of a place of compassion and love more than anything else.